Abstract
This article examines the ‘global life’ of a teacher school that Russian imperial officials opened in 1876 to Russify the tsarist empire’s Turkic-speaking Muslim subjects in the Volga-Ural region. Interventions and transformations at the local, imperial and transregional scales over the next several decades altered the context in which this imperial institution the Kazan Tatar Teacher School operated. The school’s effectiveness in achieving its pedagogical goals turned into a political problem for the tsarist center as a result. A Berlin-born German Turkologist in Russian government service designed the school’s curriculum to offer European-inspired secular knowledge. He called it ‘Russian knowledge’ and introduced it to his superiors as a gateway to Russification. He also incorporated Islamic studies and some Muslim daily practices into the school programme to avoid a backlash from the local Muslim population. Over time, a small but vocal cohort of progressivist Muslims took advantage of this programme to acquire conversance in the language and culture of the empire’s evolving cosmopolitan public. As Eurocentric transregional movements from socialism to nationalism permeated that culture, however, the Kazan Tatar Teacher School served as an incubator for politicization among Russia’s Muslims to the ire of the tsarist regime’s centrist advocates and agents.
A recent genetic link between Sami and the Volga-Ural region of Russia
